Varroa treatment

[thewoodgatherer]

Agree with Jim on this one. I never use Apiguard as I'm treating hives from mid-Sept and it's way to cold to work efficiently up here. I vape with a sublimox and generally 3 to 4 vapes at 5 day intervals works well for the majority of hives. Some are more difficult (and I don't know why) and just continue to drop large quantities of mites. Possibly robbing of feral colonies? I would have said inefficiency of vaping, but the sublimox fills the whole hive (double brood) with vapour and the 3 day mite drops can be enormous.
Worst case ended up with 10 vapes to get 3 day drops into single figures. No apparent damage to colony overall.
It's the 5 day interval you need to work at, as 7 days is too long and will allow emerged mites to re-enter cells.
I've now adopted a 4 vapes and you're out....or rather you are now on Apivar strips if you are still dropping a large numbers of mites.

Your 100% on the interaction with the Apiguard which in this instance was poor as I had trouble getting the bees to touch it, for interest looking at my notes temperature was average 20 deg C for the weeks of treatment. In the end I mixed the remains of each tin and spread on cardboard which the bees chewed and dropped through the hive to be found as shavings on the inspection board. In the future if I see little interaction then I will be removing and trying something else.

[Cable_Fairy]

I think if you already have MAQS use it now. It has a short shelf life and so probably won't keep till next season. I have used it late in the year in colonies with high drops and subsequent oxalic acid treatment showed there were few mites left. It is stated to work down to 10C so depending on where you are it should be warm enough. Forecast here is 13 C today.

Jim, many thanks for your reply, I checked the Varroa boards at lunchtime, (almost 24 hours), I did not count them but there were a lot, mostly very small ones. I have used MAQS, so will see what happens in 7 days, the temperature today reached 13C

[Patrick]

Interesting article in the BBJ bit of latest BBKA News about untreated colonies in Norway by Prof Steve Martin with low mite reproduction.

Suggested mechanism is uncapping then re-sealing of brood but without any further observed intervention. Something more to it surely? I wonder if they are keeping their powder dry for a more evidenced reveal later.

I wondered if the latitude of Norway could be a factor but as Avignon was also mentioned probably not.

I would love not to have to treat bees but who knows how widespread this unknown bee characteristic is, if it is the relevant mechanism or indeed if it really does qualify as practical tolerance? Intriguing.

[NigelP]

I wondered if the latitude of Norway could be a factor but as Avignon was also mentioned probably not.

Not relevant Patrick. To date all the discrete populations of untreated bees seem to have developed slightly different methods to live with varroa. However, it usually involves frequent swarming (often 2-3 times a year), brood breaks and very small colonies. Even the so called Russian Varroa tolerant bees overwinter on 3 frames of bees max...
Not the sort of bees you want in your own apiary.
But the good news is.......There are going to be commercially available VSH Buckfast bees available this coming season. There are also some very good VSH Carniolan bees around; but these are not available commercially.
As Far as I can discern non of them breed true, so the next generation (if open mated to local mongrel drones) will not express VSH. The mating's and crosses need to be tightly controlled (isolated mating, II).
To me if you pay £100 for a VSH queen you need to ask how much is the varroa treatment per year for a non VSH queen?

[Cable_Fairy]

I think if you already have MAQS use it now. It has a short shelf life and so probably won't keep till next season. I have used it late in the year in colonies with high drops and subsequent oxalic acid treatment showed there were few mites left. It is stated to work down to 10C so depending on where you are it should be warm enough. Forecast here is 13 C today.

Jim, many thanks for your reply, I checked the Varroa boards at lunchtime, (almost 24 hours), I did not count them but there were a lot, mostly very small ones. I have used MAQS, so will see what happens in 7 days, the temperature today reached 13C

Well it's 9 days since I removed the treatment. I had put the Varroa inspection boards on bricks under the hives, and the first three days of treatment the boards were "Black" with Varroa. This reduced over the week and on the final day there were only a couple. I checked the boards this morning and there are quite a number on one of the hives, the other hardly any. I think I will have to put fogging equipment on the Christmas list and see what Father Christmas drops down the chimney.

[AdamD]

If the boards were black with varroa, then it has been well-worth treating!
I will treat between Christmas and New year - I hope at that time the brood will be at a minimum.

For Norway, I suspect the bees there have a longer broodless period than we do which would help the bees. The uncapping and re-capping process is an interesting one however.

And if you want to beat Santa dropping something down your chimney, Thornes have a black Friday sale ending today. 10% off everything.

[DianeBees]

Interesting article in the BBJ bit of latest BBKA News about untreated colonies in Norway by Prof Steve Martin with low mite reproduction.

I would love not to have to treat bees but who knows how widespread this unknown bee characteristic is, if it is the relevant mechanism or indeed if it really does qualify as practical tolerance? Intriguing.

He's said he's got a new PhD student starting who'll be working on the next phase.
But yes def more to come! They are finalising things at the moment
He was at Preston recently and gave an interesting talk.

[nealh]

With the mild temps at the mo and only a few really cold days so far, brood and mite proliferation is still something to be of concern. Following my autmn vape treatments, mites I have seen since Monday's vape are still numerous.

Nuc . Tues <20M / Weds < 30M
#1 . Tues <80M / Weds <60M
#2. Tues n/a / Weds <180M
#3. Tues n/a / Weds <100M
#6. Tues <130M / Weds <80M
#7. Tues n/a / Weds 190M.

I'm seeing greater mites numbers now then I did with my autumn treatments.

[Patrick]

Thanks for the heads up Neal.

Apart from the downpour all Saturday, we still have very mild weather here and plenty of bee flying days. Noted on a Micheal Palmer video the other day him saying that in his locality in the States bees might not do a cleansing flight from late Autumn to April. Around here I doubt they have even clustered much yet.

Taking Jim's previous suggestion, might be treating a bit earlier this year by the sounds of it. August treatment seems a very long way off on a dull, windy December day.

[NigelP]

Yes, will continue to treat my problem hives until their drops match the other hives (less than 10 in 3 days.
I'm intrigued as to why some are now showing high levels as autumn treatments did sort them all out....must have been a lot of breeding/robbing going on since.